Introduction

There is no National Curriculum for "Home Economics". It seems to be a subject not taken seriously in schools but just squeezed in for a couple of years at Secondary school. Can "food technology" really prepare someone to take care of a home?

The training and qualifications necessary for the jobs of homemaking, and motherhood even more so, are seriously undervalued. In schools, the subjects of "home economics", "childcare" or "child development", "needlecraft" and related subjects, which are rarely taught prior to the "options" stage anyway, tend to be discouraged as non-academic subjects, leading only to "lowly" careers, and thus tend only to be taken up by a small minority of "under-achieving" girls, the assumption being that all girls will go on to a paid career and will have little or no need of these "lowly" subjects [the other implication being that these skills are easy enough and trivial enough to be picked "up on-the-job"].

However, since even high-flying career-women are more than likely to have at least one child in their life-time and be at home for at least a short period (and even high-flying career women still bear the majority of the childcare and housework burdens) this attitude is non-sensical and has led to a whole generation of women being under-qualified (or even totally un-qualified) for a job that they are very likely to have to fulfil at some point in their lives; leading, in turn, to a vicious circle of feeling inadequate and so leaving the children with carers and (too) early "educators" to go back to "work", convinced also that they have no choice financially (I speak from experience), thus setting an example for the next generation of girls and women.

Boys also need to learn "home economics" (1) in order that they may be able to take care of themselves (competent home-making wives are hard to find, and anyway, they may remain single) and (2) in order that they may appreciate the job that their wives are doing.

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Related Pages:

Childcare

Cookery

Homemaking

Gardening

Handicrafts

Animal Husbandry

Money & Time

Godly Womanhood

Messianic Keepers at Home

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